


The Wolf Hour

by Meisiluosi



Category: Original Work, Vurt - Jeff Noon, Vurt AU - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Brno, But mostly angst, Gen, Long-Term Relationship(s), M/M, Morbid Imagery, Nightmares, Pestilence, Some fluff as well, Urban Fantasy, Wild Hunt, communication problems, looking glass war, shadow man - Freeform, vurtman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 23:58:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11977806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meisiluosi/pseuds/Meisiluosi
Summary: Blake and Lynn are tired of each other's shit but they wouldn't have it any other way.Fluff (some), angst (a lot) and (the early stages of?) the Looking Glass wars.





	The Wolf Hour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flowersaretarts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersaretarts/gifts).



> While I didn't intentionally go against the canon, the departure from it in terms of genre and aesthetics is quite substantial - and there are likely to be more deviations from it in future stories. (This is a first one in a series.)  
> Somehow, this has decided to become kind of its own thing - but not enough of its own thing to let go of Vurt completely.  
> It's also something of a love letter to the city where I've spent most of my adult life.
> 
> Vurt is Jeff Noon's.  
> Blake and Lynn are mine. (And believe it or not, it's *not* supposed to be an Outlast reference.)
> 
> I am aware of (and eager to explore) the Vurt RPG, but totally unfamiliar with it at the moment.  
> This particular take on Vurt doesn't feature any of it. Not yet, anyway. It probably contradicts it in places.

**From _Yap Like A Local (Dictionary of the Kennels Cant)_**  
**dummy** _n. pl. dummies_  
A dreamless person, i.e. person who cannot enter the shared virtuality of Vurt. Neither by sucking on feathers, nor by connecting to a port or ingesting a live drug. Such inability can have varying causes and occurs in varying degrees, ranging from mere insensitivity to strong adverse reactions (both psychological and physical).  
_Adj._  
Characterized as being dreamless, being typical for the dreamless, belonging to dreamless (indiv. or group) or being marketed at the dreamless.

 **vurto** _n. pl. vurtos  
_ A person (usually humanoid or human-passing) who either originated in Vurt (partly or entirely) or has been infected by Vurt. (Doesn't apply to regular people with dormant yellow-eye gene.) Vurtos are known for being at least partly 'at home' in Vurt and usually enter it 'featherless' (i.e. at will and without any external aids). Typically yellow-eyed or with traces of yellow in their irises. Often active within and around the scene, for example as shimmyographers, dream map designers, vurt actors – or vurtcops.

 

* * *

 

 

 _**Clinical notes, client #251** _ **.**

**Blakeley Everett. Foreign national. Holder of permanent residence permit.**

**51 year old hybrid male of human and shadowkin heritage. Dreamless. In a long-term (25 yrs) same-sex relationship he labels as 'complex'. Lives with his partner.  
** **Proprietor of a vintage film club (with 3 employees).  
** Known pre-existing conditions: mild vurt intolerance; hypertension; mild asthma; moderate superficial symptoms of shadow decay (with no medical complications).  
Mr. Everett complained about low motivation, mood swings and high irritability. When asked for more specifics, he said he 'came here to get a medchip and shut up his boyfriend'. He refused to delve deeper into his relationship issues.  
**Apart from the symptoms already mentioned, there is clearly a long-term substance abuse problem. He freely admits to being a 'boozer' and doesn't seem to be keen on changing his current lifestyle.  
** **Oriented x3 (time, space, person). Affect is very guarded but moves to irritability if pressed about sensitive topics. Barely any observable shadow smoke manifestations. (Says he doesn't like to 'show it off'.)** **Answers the easy, comfortable questions (like those about his job) in detail, though he has a bit of trouble following a coherent narrative or line of argumentation and he clearly has some memory and** **concentration** **issues.**

 **problem:** **Severe depression, with moodiness, irritability and general lack of motivation or direction being the most prominent symptoms. Client's main motivation to seek therapy, however, was to 'shut up his boyfriend' who is apparently more concerned than Mr. Everett himself.**

 **assessment: Primary response to emotional distress – denial and anger. No healthy coping mechanisms. Resorts to 'booze and haze', to his work, or to promiscuous behaviour (to all of which he freely admits) to escape his problems.** **Self-destructive tendencies and thoughts. Mentions death often.** **Refuses to open up about more sensitive issues and doesn't even pretend to be taking the therapy seriously.**

 **treatment: I recommended starting a diary & suggested he should keep showing up for sessions, even if only to ** **placate** **his partner. Prescription for 2 30-tablet packs of** **trazodone** ** & a ** **medchip.**

**goals: I'd like to get Mr. Everett to open up more and talk about his relationships. But for now the main objective is to persuade him to continue the therapy and take some interest in his mental and overall health. His task for next time is to start the diary – and to actually show up for the session.  
**   


* * *

 

**2:50 pm**

Blake had barely spoken all day. Always a sure sign something was amiss.

There was no conversation as they sat at the dining table, chewing on their takeaway potato pancakes. While Blake's gaze was firmly fixed on the pack of toothpicks in the middle of the table, Lynn was studying him, looking for microcracks in his thoughtful expression.

Dear, when had Blakeley grown so old? Twenty years ago he would have passed for a regular, if somewhat undernourished human – and a handsome one, no less. Now the rot was plain on his face: cheeks sunken too far in, skin a shade too ashen and an inch too tight on his skull, dark purple veins weaving thick webs on his temples.  
Rot was a thing most shadow men had to live with. And though it took a while before it caught up with Blake, age eventually brought it out.

Lynn loved him no less for it, but Blake was agonizingly self-conscious about it. He had his ways of coping. Meticulous self-grooming was one of them. Even now, on his day off, Blake was wearing a shirt, a waistcoat and a necktie, his greying hair was smoothly combed and his face was clean shaven. A marked contrast to Lynn's slight but ostentatious self-neglect, messy dark blond curls, a week's worth of stubble, worn jeans and all. But then, fates (and age) had been kinder to Lynn. His dog barely showed, few people even knew. And while age, insomnia and booze had robbed him of some of his good looks, they'd left him with more than enough to charm his way out of a routine drug check at the toll gates.

Blake's head twitched a bit, as if he'd heard a sudden noise or caught a motion at the edge of his vision. His hand was shaking as he put the unfinished pancake back on his plate and reached for a tissue.  
His pupils were so contracted they got almost lost in the pools of pale blue that surrounded them. He was stiff and tense, sitting on the edge of the chair with his elbows pressed into his sides, and there was not a strand of shadow smoke to be seen about him.  
Blake was stitching himself shut, so desperate to keep up the appearances of normality, that he wound up completely rigid, eyes and posture and shadow.

Another small tick, as if in response to something Lynn couldn't see or hear.  
He was on the verge of falling into a heap of jitters. And he was clearly hallucinating.  
Lynn knew a flashback when he saw one. 'How do they feel?' he asked.

Blake frowned. 'How does what feel?'

Lynn sighed. 'How blind – or how stupid – do you think I am? The flashbacks.'  
Blake met his eyes briefly – but didn't hold the eye contact. 'They feel...odd. 'Unsettling' is the word, I think.'  
Lynn finished his pancake, reached for a tissue and wiped his hands. He tried to keep his face and his voice calm and collected – but he could feel his composure was cracking. 'How long have you had them?'

Blake's voice was hardly more than a whisper. 'A couple of months.'  
'They are getting worse, aren't they...'

'Obviously. You haven't noticed them before.'

'I've had my suspicions for a while...' Lynn said. 'Blake, how are you still drinking that shit?'  
'Don't start now, please...' Blake groaned.

'Shall I wait until your brain stops misfiring all over the place?' Lynn asked. 'Or do I just keep silent and watch you roast what's left of it on more vurtbooze?'

'Lynn...'

'You need to stop.'

Blake stood up and stepped back, as if he wanted to put more distance between the two of them. 'Lynn, you don't understand...'

'Don't I?' Lynn fought to keep the snarl in, but the anger was showing, he knew. 'What I understand perfectly is that you are trading your soul, your mind, your... Your self...away. For a false sense of connection that isn't even there! One bottle of fairy wine smuggled from beyond the Looking Glass fools your brain for one night but one bottle too many fucks it up for good!'

Blake simply stared at him.

'So what if there's one thing we cannot share... We still share everything else,' Lynn said, almost pleadingly. 'Blakeley, love, that shit fries even regular brains. What do you think it's gonna do to a dreamless one?'

'It's just a flashback, Lynn, stop fretting.'

Lynn's anger finally got the better of him. 'Flashbacks are your fucking wake up call, goddammit!'

'So what if I fry my motherfucking brain!' Blake shouted back. 'At least I won't have to worry about being left behind when you go all feathers and disappear into thin air in a cloud of dream dust!' He froze and blinked, suddenly voiceless. It was that kind of silence that wanted to suck the spilled words back in, a silence with some heavy regret in it.

Lynn growled. 'I intend to do no such thing!'  
Blake didn't respond to that. He just dashed to the bedroom and once he re-emerged, he was wearing his blazer and hat.

Lynn cooled down just a bit and asked, as calmly as he could, 'Did you at least go to see that therapist?'

Blake found his words again. 'Yeah and it was every bit as much a waste of time as I'd told you it would be!' He cussed under his breath and started digging around in his blazer pocket. 'Got that fucking medchip, one more for my ever growing collection!' He took out a small plastic bag and tossed it at Lynn. It hit him on the chest and fell into his lap. 'Happy?' He grabbed his umbrella and muttered, 'Don't wait up for me.'

'What do you mean _don't wait up for me_?' Lynn called after him. 'It's three o'clock in the afternoon! Where the hell are you going?'

But the only response he got was the sound of the door slamming shut.

They had been through this argument countless times before. But the stakes were higher now. Recurring flashbacks were a warning sign - a big red flag going up.  
Lynn had seen a few unfortunate sods who'd had that one bottle of vurtbooze too many. A mere thought of Blake in a similar state made his heart freeze almost to a halt.

But any attempt to talk some sense into him led to a nasty row these days.  
A vurto and a flightless bird – a creature made of dream stuff and a dreamless man...

They were a mismatched couple indeed.

 _D_ _isappear into thin air in a cloud of dream dust?_  
Maybe they'd been always headed this way. Maybe it was inevitable.

Maybe Blake was simply being an idiot.

Either way, Lynn was getting desperate.

* * *

 

**_Shimmy-Oh! #631 (The Dummy Special)_ **

_There's been a rumour flying about that dummies need not worry about staying out during wolf hours. And the dreamless kin buy into it gladly I've noticed, maybe because it feels empowering, dunno..._  
_I've no idea where it came from, but it needs to stop._

_We've seen more and more wild hunts recently and they've been getting worse, especially round the Kennels. You can barely get a clear buzzer signal that side of the city these days due to all the vurt interference._

_Now, it is true that a dummy cannot be spirited away. There is nothing for the hooks to catch on to, no vurt vibes to hijack. The hunt, however, still has ears, eyes, noses – and all kinds of other sensory organs that can process the reality around them once they enter our side of the Looking Glass. They also have swords and guns, hands and feet, claws and teeth – or all of the above – to name at least some of the less exotic appendages and weapons that can be found on various members of any given hunting host. And they are all perfectly capable of mauling, gnawing, scratching, biting, slashing, shooting – or ripping you into a scatter of bleeding, twitching shreds, if the king of the hunt orders them to._

_And that is exactly what they do to dummies. They cannot snatch them away, so they simply kill them – and they usually do it in a mightily vicious manner._

_There was one such kill barely a week ago. You've all seen the news blurbs, the poor idiot was scattered all along Cejl and they even found bits of her in a drainpipe some 30 feet above the ground. We had another highly suspicious (and graphic) death just yesterday. Both dummies. In fact, according to the police statistics, around 70% of suspected wild hunt kills are the dreamless people._  
_So, here's a word of advice to the dreamless among you and to your dreamless friends and spouses and loved ones: Don't be idiots. Stay indoors, honour the hour like the rest of us do – be safe._  
_If you do run into a wild hunt, don't taunt and tease, do not parade in front them like you're some fucking indestructible superhero. They're less sensitive to your presence than to the presence of regular people, let alone vurtos or shads... That can work to your advantage. So get out of sight, shut your mouth, stub out that fag and – if you can – hold your breath. If you're lucky, the horde will roar by without taking any notice of you._  
_If you do get noticed, run like hell. You're probably still screwed, but better die running than die standing and gaping in the middle of the street like a deer in the headlights._

_Oh. One more thing... Stay out of passageways and gateways and dark corners unless you can put a door between the street and yourself. Such places tend to be overrun with vurtrats. And if there is a hunt nearby, vurtrats will...well...rat on you. True to their name, shifty little b astards._

* * *

**3 am**

Lynn always stayed up late.

But there was staying up late for work, there was staying up late for booze – and then there was staying up late for worry. If two of those combined, it was bad enough, but tonight it apparently had to be all three. He was poring over a bunch of unfinished notes and sketches and the shimmy-tank of his mixing desk was swirling with faintly glowing colours, casting eerie reflections off the half-drunk bottle of red. And he'd made far better progress with the bottle than he had with the work, for he was too damn worried about Blake.  
His fool of a boyfriend had the silly habit of staying out in the streets during the wolf hour and it was driving Lynn insane. The wild hunts had been getting increasingly brutal in past few years and such carelessness was borderline suicidal.  
But then, so was Blake.  
Lynn hadn't seen him or heard from him since that row they'd had at lunch.

The chronobug in the clock chirped and buzzed 3 AM.

Lynn sighed, walked over to the window and looked at the rain-beaten street. A regular late August night out there, nothing out of the ordinary.  
In his mind, he started to list the most likely possibilities.  
Pubs and bars in the main station area were the first option he ruled out.  
Definitely not Mendel’s Square with all its shifty zones, frequent glitches and reality micro-cracks. And it was just a stone throw away; Blake preferred long walks whenever he was upset like that.  
Stork's? Nah. That's where Blake went to play cards, not where he went to sulk.  
Had the weather been friendlier, he would have bought a box or two of cheap wine and gone to the park to rant his chatterbox off to the local mutts, robo-punks and bums, but that was out of the question for tonight – rain too heavy.  
Blues Bar, Coffin or Shimmy Soap, then.  
Not good.  
Frequent Hunts that side of the Kennels.  
  
He tried to buzz through to Blake. Again. He'd been trying all evening. But the response was the same as before: 'The device you are trying to connect with is either switched off, without signal, or blocking the incoming contacts.'   
Lynn checked the clock again. 3.15. A quarter into the hour.  
It took him another five minutes to make up his mind, but once he did, he was ready to leave in a flash.  
It did occur to him as he was changing into his jeans and T-shirt that leaving the flat at this hour was a stupid idea and he cursed himself for not leaving earlier. But he was sick of his four walls and the lamp light pouring over the piled up papers, of coffee and booze and cigs, and of having no idea whether Blake was alright. He needed to get out of there and away from it all and if that meant risking a close encounter with the Hunt, so be it, he thought.  
He grabbed his jacket, checked for the key-chip in his jeans pocket – and left the flat.

The rain was heavier than it had looked through the double pane of his study's window, but Lynn decided it was too late to go back and get the umbrella. The persistent patter of the raindrops on the rooftops and on the cobblestones was a comforting wall of white noise between him and the apprehensive silence of the wolf hour.  
He traced Blake's favourite route, step by step, turn by turn. Up the Pekařská, staying away from the walls so as not to wake any sleeping buzzfucks (a blaring booze ad was the last thing he wanted to listen to right now), across the Šilingrák and down the Perv Lane that led him straight to the Mall-o-plex, then along the Feather lane and its rows of feather stands, indie feather shops and Vurtimarts (2 BLUES FOR THE PRICE OF ONE! BUY TEN AND SAVE A TWENTY PER TRIP!!). Left into Masaryk Street and to the Liberty square.

So far, so quiet, except for one tired robo-whore who called after him in the Perv Lane.

Across the square, past the clock and the fountain and towards the gallery.  
Even this time of night, the old city centre wasn't quite deserted.  
A few drunks were arguing with two dog cops,  
two vaguely humanoid creatures were making out by the plague pillar,  
a robo bum was sleeping it off on a bench and mumbling in his slumber,  
a-bunch-of-vurtrats-times-two small shiny yellow beads observed Lynn from every darkened old gateway…   
Through the gallery passageway, across the park (speeding up, for this was a bad place this time of night).

He looked at his watch. 3.40. Bad hour. 

And Blake probably sitting in one of the Kennels' many dens, burning a booze-hole in his stomach – and arseholed enough to decide  _just_  now was the best time to go home.  
  
Lynn was walking fast and it took him every last scrape of self-control not to run. The wolf hour always had the same strange, unpleasant energy to it. As if the sky was made of eyes. He felt exposed and vulnerable.  
As he strode along the M.H. road, he had to avoid more and more trash piles, shards of broken glass and pools of piss.  
  
The Kennels.

The air around these parts of the city was always thick with dope and haze and pungent with the smell of vaz, dog fur and body fluids. Now the rain had taken some of that away but Lynn could still smell it. It was there, a thin, grimy film glazed over every surface, feeding on the rain. In the morning the rising mist would once again release it into the air and it would roll out and into every corner of the Kennels, left to ripen in the scorching sun like a big pot of curdled milk.  
'Got a fifty?' A young dog fella – a pitbull or a rottweiler by the looks of him – asked from beneath the eaves of a pawnshop.  
Lynn was about to reply that he had no change on him but might have some on his way back – but before he could say anything, a frightening sound cut through the air: like a giant sheet of paper getting ripped in half by the lash of a whip.  
The sting of it paralyzed them both.  
For a fraction of a second, there was a terrible silence. And then an ugly chorus of screams and shrieks spilled out into the night.  
A shrill wail rose above the babel with all the relentless brutality of a dental drill.  
The king of the hunt.  
  
Hunts differed between nights and places.  
They reflected the collective memory of wherever they popped up, as well as the nightmares dreamt behind the closed windows, and the echos of all the latest black feather trips...  
Lynn was used to seeing them. Given his chronic insomnia problem, he missed very few of those that occasionally swept down the Pekařská street.  
He quite enjoyed watching them from the safe comfort of the flat.  
This was very different, of course, neither safe, nor comfortable – and he wasn't enjoying it one bit.

Lynn and the dog boy watched in stunned horror as the host flashed and shimmered into the air on the hill way up the M.H. road, just a couple of feet above its asphalt surface. It was the usual crowd, just what you'd expect in this city – veterans of the 30 year war in bloodied tatters of their coats, the fallen from the Hussite wars, a few Celtic and Germanic warriors, ancient, silent and half-forgotten, massacred Jews, Wehrmacht and Red Army infantry, all of them echoes of the countless moments when someone had killed or had been killed. And with them a host of nightmares, outlandish as well as mundane: strict teachers, overwhelming piles of paperwork, a pretty girl with her lips twisted in a cruel smirk, an overflowing bathtub, an old man trying to stuff his lost teeth back into his gums, an aggressive swarm of paperclips, a debt collector sent by a loan shark, a printer spitting out one botched page after another… And Pestilence at the heart of the host, riding a skeletal horse, shrouded in a buzzing cloud of rotten stench and black flies, with a cruel looking whip in his boil-infested hand. 

Lynn was more used to seeing Hunts led by War, usually in the guise of a 30-year-war era Swedish general, or an SS officer. It was almost always some variation on one of the four horsemen in most continental cities. Lynn found it curious and even recorded a rather detailed Shimmy-Oh! buzz about it, not so long ago. Damn, he'd promised a follow up and had all but forgotten about it, maybe he should get back to it next week... And his mind may have trailed even further off had the king not given another shriek and pointed the whip in what was most definitely his direction.  
_Blake... For fuck's sake, Blake, I hope for once you've been the sensible between the two of us and that you're behind a bolted door._

Lynn started to back off. He hissed at the dog boy. 'Most doors will be shut deaf and blind this hour of night, but there is an office building not too far from here, you know which one?’ __  
'Sure, we go there for haze-outs. The gate to the inner yard is usually open.’ __  
‘ It is definitely open now, I passed the building a few minutes ago. Go get behind the bloody gate, close it behind you and keep it closed, no matter what.’ __  
'What about you, man?’ __  
'Don’t worry about me. See?' Lynn pointed at his eyes, sprinkled with spots of dandelion yellow which were visible even in the dim light of the street lamps . 'I'm _good_ with Vurt, kid. I've beaten impossible trips before .' And even as he said that, he gave the boy a push and began to run.   
  
Lynn’s morbid curiosity urged him to look back more than once and the Hunt was closing in on them fast; either he imagined it or he could actually hear the flies buzzing in the swarm that crowned the king’s head. The mutt gave up any pretense at dignity and started to run on all fours. The hunters caught up and most of them passed Lynn in pursuit of the faster moving target. The kid was running fast, but he wasn't fast enough. He made it almost to the Ratty's nonstop bistro door, but no further. Lynn saw a long worm-like tentacle shoot out of the bathtub, wrap itself around the poor sod’s ankle and pull him into the water. It was so fast the dog boy didn’t even get a chance to cry out. All he managed was a tiny frightened yelp.

Lynn slowed down and stopped. He was surrounded. And he found himself strangely calm all of a sudden – mildly annoyed, but resigned to the inevitable.

His nostrils were hit by the nauseating stench of pus and rot and he became aware of the sound of hooves slackening into a slow trot and then stopping right behind him.  
A fly started to buzz around his head. And then another... And another...  
A vurtrat ran over his foot. He turned around and followed it with his gaze as it climbed up the skeletal horse's leg and into the folds of the King's tattered black shroud.

The wails and shrieks had died down, but he could still hear the flip-flip-flip-flip of the papers spat out by the printer, the splashing of the water in the tub, the quiet moans of the old man and the grazing of the roots of his teeth against his jaw bone…There was the occasional snort or cough or snarl, a maw squelching open or snapping shut, the odd clank of teeth against teeth or metal against the road surface.   
The pretty girl snickered and scoffed.  
And the soft, indifferent wall of rain kept humming and whispering.

Lynn looked up into the decomposing face and the dead, clouded eyes trapped him.  
He could feel a tug somewhere deep within.  
He was being spirited away, into the Vurt. Some nasty yellow theatre, no doubt. Somewhere even he might not be able to escape. Few of those taken by the Hunt ever made it back.  
This was likely to be a one-way trip.  
All this was running through his head as he tried to resist the pull. He could feel the reality dissolving around him as the solid lines of the city were giving in to the blurry dreamscape of the Edge. But perhaps it wasn't too late yet. Maybe he'd manage to struggle free and jump into another trip. A fool's hope, but he was clinging on to it with every fragment of strength he still had. Unfortunately, he didn't have much and even that was leaving him fast.  
The flies descended upon him, got into his ears and nose and started attacking his eyes and mouth. No amount of thrashing around or waving his hands could chase even a single one away – and the putrid smell emanating from the horse and the rider made him want to puke.

  
Then a bottle of vodka flew in out of nowhere and hit the k ing straight on the head.  
'Hey!' The familiar cracked voice bellowed from the corner of Ten 28.  
Lynn's heart almost stopped, there and then. _Oh Blake, you silly bastard..._  
'Hey, rotten cunt! Leave that fucker alone, he's mine!' Blake yelled and started to wave his arms like some crazed clock, the one brandishing his black umbrella jabbing in the ghastly rider's direction, the other one flailing between 12  th  and 5  th  hour. 'Here! Try to spirit _me_ away you ugly fuck!' A few nightmares from the back of the host turned around and began to advance towards him but recoiled back. 'Not so easy, eh?' He picked up a broken bottle and threw it at the k ing.  
'Run, you idiot!' Lynn cried out. He'd shout again, but the flies were already streaming down his throat and he couldn't do anything, just cough and spit and gag.

Well, at least he could feel the earth beneath his feet again. He was back in reality, however unpleasant that reality was at the moment.

A flicker in the king's eyes – a command – and the nightmares who had previously recoiled from Blake began advancing again.  
Lynn had King's full attention once more. Threads of the alien, hostile mind coiled themselves around his consciousness, burrowing into his dreams, his memories, his subconscious – and beyond.  
So that was it. He had about five seconds left in the waking world and then, well, fuck knew what...  
  
Then he thought of Blake, foolish and complacent – or foolish and suicidal, whatever it was right now – and of all the violent fury that was about to engulf him. There was a pang of pain in his eyes and at the back of his throat, a sting of something purer and stronger than the plague riddled filth assaulting him.  
He mustered all his remaining willpower, reaching into reserves he hadn't known he had mere seconds ago. His mind rose like a tidal wave and pushed back in one last desperate counter-attack.

And he felt something, almost like a surprised gasp.  
Out of the corner of his eye Lynn saw the attacking phantoms falter and halt.

The king's left hand shot out and grabbed him by the neck. The ground disappeared from beneath his feet as he suddenly found himself on an eye to eye level with the rider. The king's mouth slowly opened – and a stream of buzzing blackness spilled out.  
More flies. _Fan-fuckin'-tastic_.  
They comletely obscured Lynn's vision and the droning blocked out his hearing.  
He tried to scratch and hit at the hand, he tried to growl and twitch... But all his strength was spent and even gasping for air seemed like too much effort. He was falling away from himself.

The buzzing in his left ear vibed out a word _– Impressive –_ even as the word _– Intriguing –_ resonated from the right at a slightly lower pitch. Then the two frequences buzzed out in unison:  
_– Futile._  
And the king attacked again, with double force.

At that moment, a tower clock somewhere struck four and the chronobug in Lynn's watch chirped four times.  
Blake's umbrella, thrown with flawless aim, hit the skeletal horse across the back.  
  
And the King touched upon something very very deep and very very strange, a tangle of weres and weren'ts, had-and-hadn't-beens, woulds and would-nevers that seemed to branch out infinitely in front of his mind's sight. A confusing web of past and future eventualities that held the threads of the Vurt-touched one together.

He hesitated.  
  
Even as all the lights were going dark and Lynn's grip on his consciousness was loosening, he could hear the maddening buzz in his head weave itself into a question: _– WHAT are you? –_

  
The echoes of the last chimes died down and the host of nightmares disappeared in a cloud of yellow mist. There one moment, gone the next – and even the mist they left behind dispersed within a second, much faster than any natural fog would.  
  
Blake stopped midway through blocking an attack and realized he was still screaming.  
He took a calming breath and took in the scene in front of him. All that was left of the grotesque spectacle was an overflowing tub, a pile of discoloured blood-stained teeth and a rather plain looking potted plant.  
And Lynn, lying face down, motionless and silent.  
Blake rushed over and turned him on the back.  
He cursed when he saw Lynn's unhealthy colour. Was the damned fool even breathing at all?  
He shook him gently and called his name a few times but got no response. So he gave him a wake-up slap that left a red handprint on his cheek.

Lynn's eyes slowly blinked open and awake. Then they opened even wider as he gasped for air, rolled onto his side, got on all four and began coughing and gagging. He threw up a handful of big fat flies, took a slow, painful breath and started coughing again.

Blake barked: 'What the fuck were you thinking, running about the Kennels at this hour?'  
'I should be asking you the same question...' Lynn wheezed between bouts of cough. When the fit finally ceased, he sat, spat out one last fly, wiped his mouth and massaged his left cheek. 'Gentler next time, if you please.'  
Blake pulled him into a hug so fierce it almost squeezed all air out of his lungs. 'I'm sorely tempted to slap you again, for the bloody fright you've given me.' He withdrew a bit, took Lynn's face into his hands and gently stroked the burning left side of his jaw. 'And I wasn't running about, I was waiting out the hour at the Coffin.' He pointed at the nearby pub. The windows were full of gaping faces, though no one had dared to open the door yet. 'I don't recall all the things I said and did when I was trying to get them to open the door and let me out, but I think I may have insulted some people...'

Lynn was too relieved, too grateful and too guilty to scold Blake for his recklessness. He entwined his fingers on the back of Blake’s neck, as if to make sure it was still intact, and rested his brow against Blake's.  
He registered a faint smell of v urtbooze on Blake's breath. _Damn, Blake, when will you realize it ain't worth it,_ he thought.  
It wasn't really intended for him, but Blake intercepted the thought anyway. He shadow-whispered to Lynn : _'_ **How about you let me be the judge of that?'  
** Lynn sighed. Trying to talk sense into Blake would be like talking to a wall and he was too damn weary to get into that now. ' Got any of it left?' he asked, suddenly desperate to get rid of the nasty aftertaste that still lingered in his mouth.  
Blake handed him his flask and Lynn gratefully swallowed a generous slug of Arcadian. He spat out the next one after rinsing his mouth. And then he drained the rest in two gulps. 'Ran out,' he said as he handed the empty flask back. 'It packs a punch. You're gonna be sick as a pike tomorrow. I hope you realize I'm not goint to...'  
Whatever it was that Lynn was about to say, his tone and his look made it clear that it was going to be something Blake wouldn't like. So he didn't wait for him to finish the sentence and he shut him up with a kiss – to the sounds of howling, cheering and whistling from beyond the Coffin's closed windows . It was a deep, hungry kiss, all promise and expectation. _'_ **Let's enjoy tonight and worry about tomorrow later...'**

Lynn accepted it without much enthusiasm and withdrew as soon as Blake ran out of breath. 'Blakeley, love, we’ve just had a really ugly...encounter. I’m not in the mood.’ He got to his feet, extended his hand and helped Blake up. He smoothed the lapels of Blake’s coat and adjusted his cravat. 'Sorry.’  
Blake smiled, picked up the umbrella and – rather pointlessly – spread it above their dripping wet heads. 'It's a long walk home. You might change your mind.'  
Lynn almost replied that no, he didn't think so, but then he paused, shrugged and said: 'Yeah, I might.' Because yeah, he might.

As they were passing the potted plant, he picked it up and inspected it. 'Poor sod, that dog fellow. Getting swapped for this...' The plant looked utterly unremarkable, smelled like a geranium and didn't show any promise of blossoming any time soon. 'Looks well cared for, though. Maybe someone really liked it.'  
'Well, that means someone must have really liked that mutt,' Blake growled. 'Sad, but nothing we can do. Come on, let's shake a leg,' he said and tugged at Lynn's sleeve.  
Lynn shot him an annoyed glance. 'Your sensitivity overwhelms me,' he mumbled, before turning his attention back to the green thing in the pot. He gazed at the plant for a while longer, sniffed at it – and decided that it was worth keeping. 'You'll be well watered and I'll read you a bedtime story every now and then, how about that,' he mumbled and the long dark green leaves perked up a little. 'OK then, deal.'  
Blake shook his head in disbelief: 'When was the last time you offered something like that to me?'  
Lynn sniggered at him. 'What? You want watering?'  
'Oaf.'  
'Sorry, Blake, but last time I agreed to read for you, you requested _Crime and Punishment_ ,' Lynn replied. 'One more chapter of that – or, heaven forbid, Zola – and I'd be jumping out of the window.'  
'I'd leave you for spouting such sacrilege if you weren't such a looker.'  
'Thanks, I guess.'  
Blake glowered at Lynn and then at the plant. 'May I at least bother you to keep that thing in your study?'  
'Sure thing, love...'  
'Hope it doesn't try to eat us or something...'  
'Shut up, Blake, you shouldn’t be giving Duncan funny ideas.’  
'Duncan?!’ Blake scoffed. 'You mean…that?’ And he pointed at the green thing in the pot.  
'Yeah. You must admit it looks like a Duncan.’  
'Christ…’ Blake shook his head again. But try as he might to scowl, he couldn't hold the smile back any more.

  
It was a long, slow walk indeed. They spent most of it listening to the rain and the sounds of the city as it started to awake from the fearful silence of the wolf hour.  
Lynn was shut off in his own bubble, lost in troubled thought. As happy as he was to be alive and more or less well, it made little sense to him. The king had beaten him, crushed him so thoroughly that one more tug at the strings would have swept him off to the other side of the Looking Glass. But the king had hesitated. Long enough for the bells to toll four times.  
The hunt had let him go.  
Why?  
As if in response to his bewilderment, something jeered at him from the depths of his mind, an old monster, contained and half-forgotten. Lynn put a lid on that thought. Not _that_. By all the feather deities, anything except that... Not the Wasting Yellow.  
The king's puzzled question echoed in his mind.

– _What are you? –_  
  
He shuddered, feeling eerily cold all of a sudden.  
Blake noticed the nervous note in Lynn's silence. 'Something's the trouble?'  
'Nothing, really... It's just...' Lynn hesitated. 'He could have spirited me away or scattered me to the winds with a click of his tongue, I was done for. But... He withdrew. Almost as if he was...cringing away from something.'  
'You mean the big ugly fucker?' Blake asked and he rolled his eyes back and sucked in his cheeks in a disconcertingly accurate impression of the Pestilence king.  
'Please, never do that again,' Lynn said and there was no trace of humour in his tone. 'Yeah. The very same.' At that moment, a tickle in his chest sent him into another coughing fit. The maddening sensation of something lodged in his windpipe only got worse as the fit got more violent. He pushed the potted plant into Blake's hand and doubled over, dragging a laboured, painful breath. The persistent itch suddenly flared up into pure agony, as if someone stabbed him through with a hot poker – and then it was gone. The coughing subsided and Lynn spat out a bit of blood.

A damned plague fly. One of them was still in there.  
A funny idea occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, he hadn't been let go after all.

He slowly straightened up and took the plant back from Blake, who was watching him with worry and suspicion. 'Are you alright?'  
Lynn wiped the blood off his chin and nodded.  
'Lynn?'  
'I'm fine,' Lynn replied, voice a shade hoarser than usual.  
**_'No, you're not.'_**  
'I will be once I've had my coffee and a nap...'  
Blake looked doubtful. Lynn gave him a quick peck on the cheek – which didn't do much to erase the doubtful expression, but it was nonetheless rewarded with a warm smile.  
Lynn wasn't fine. And he was worried.  
But there would be time for that later. All that mattered for the moment was the quiet, lazy comfort of walking back home with that impossible idiot by his side. As they passed the Mall-o-plex and turned into the Perv Lane, the robo-whore whistled after them and Blake sneaked his possessive, protective arm round Lynn's waist to pull him closer. Lynn staggered a bit and laughed at the gesture. Then he snuggled closer to Blake and lovingly rubbed his shoulder.  
This was home.  
Blake was his anchor, his shelter, his hearth. Blake was his everything.  
'What did you mean when you said I'd leave you behind...?' he asked. 'Why did you say that? You know I'd never...'  
'Nevermind that. I was angry. Wasn't thinking straight.'  
Lynn wasn't buying it, but there was probably no point pursuing that line of dialogue now.

* * *

_19 th  Aug._  
  
_4:15 a.m._

_Lynn is asleep. For once, he's actually asleep, thank heavens. He has been perpetually sleep deprived in these past few months. Sometimes he goes without sleep for days._

_Apparently it takes a brush with a wild hunt to exhaust him enough to override the insomnia._  
_And here I am, sleepless in his stead, writing my first entry in a diary I swore I would never start._

_The whole encounter with the wild hunt keeps coming back to me, in persistent, vivid images, the more I want to forget. I've never been so terrified in my life. No way am I going to sleep well tonight – or a few more nights after, I dare assume._

_And to make matters worse, there is a yellow cloud fogging my mind, a scurry of movement in the periphery of my vision, and flutters of noise coming at me out of nowhere, from all directions. I'm not even sure if that's the vurtpiss that's still in my system or if I'm having another flashback._  
_Lynn is right, of course. For all I know, I probably already have drunk that one bottle of fairy wine too many._

 _I am still going to drink another._  
_And damn, it breaks my bitter heart to see him worry so much._

 _But the truth of it is he's leaving. Of course he was deeply hurt by the very suggestion earlier this day._  
_But he has been slipping – slowly, gradually and inevitably – for years. Perhaps he doesn't sense it, but I do._  
_He was born out of feathers and for feathers. Reality isn't his element – Vurt is._

 _Lynn once told me each dream, each inpho cluster has its own unique tune._  
_But I cannot hear them. Vurt is a mess of noises to me. I cannot tell Lynn's own vibes from those of that potted plant that is now sitting under the window in his study._  
_There used to be times when I could feel Lynn's presence every heartbeat of every day, like an extension of myself. My shadow bled over into his and his into mine._  
_These days Lynn can be sitting right next to me – and I can barely feel him at all. I sure can sense that growing cloud of dream fog in him. But, to me, that is not Lynn, it doesn't feel like him, it doesn't connect with me. It is a wall of noise, a foreign, undecodable thing. My shadow can still reach out for his immediate thoughts and I can shadow whisper to him – but that's nothing compared to the connection I used to have._

_Lynn is becoming an alien territory to me. And it hurts like mouth full of rotten teeth._

_There is still the comfort granted by my more conventional senses, of course, the human ones..._  
_I can still see the yellow freckles in Lynn's eyes, hear his voice, smell the traces of haze in his hair... I can touch and taste him – and feel him touch and taste me._

_For the time being, we still have that._

_But how long till he's gone to the other side of the Looking Glass? At this rate – maybe months._

_I used to think I was resigned to the idea – while the end still seemed a lifetime away. But the further gone he is, the faster he is slipping – and I'm not ready to let him go._

_Seeing and hearing him but not being able to sense him as I once could – it is like hearing a disembodied voice or looking at a hologram or a ghostprint. It feels...incomplete._

_I sometimes try using my shadow senses to trace Lynn's thoughts into one of his dreams – and yes, I can catch glimpses and memories of images and landscapes, sometimes even whole dream sequences... But in the end I always hit that noise wall._

_Only when there is enough vurtbooze in my system do I almost feel as if I can truly sense him again. It's just my brain playing tricks at me, of course. But it feels real enough, for a couple of hours at least._

 

Blake hesitated, the pen hovering just above the paper's surface. One more sentence wanted to be written. But there was an unnerving finality, a tangible weight to written words – and Blake was afraid to lend all this weight to his concluding thought. Something tickled him in the corner of the eye. He wiped the offending tear away and, with a shaking hand, he wrote the last line.

 

_He's like my life support and I'm being cut off._

 

He reread the sentence, wincing a bit.

He crossed out the _'like'_.

Then he closed the notebook and put it in the drawer of his bedside table.  
His eyes turned to Lynn, who was curled up on his side of the bed and frowning in his sleep. He reached out, pulled the blanket over Lynn's bare shoulder and stroked his hair. Lynn's creased brow smoothed out a bit and that brought a smile to Blake's face.

For now at least, Lynn was here.

And – for now – that was all that mattered.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to flowersaretarts and bbcphile for being such fantastic and supportive beta-readers.  
> And, flowersaretarts - thanks for being stuck in this trip with me!


End file.
